Sunday, March 07, 2010

South America Trip - Lima, Peru

The final stop of our trip was one day in Lima. During the previous week everyone we talked to about Lima had something bad to say about it. So we were a little nervous about where we went in Lima, but we still wanted to see as much of the city as we could.

We grabbed a cab at the airport and drove to our hostel which was in one of the more popular parts of town. We were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the city, and the weather really lifted our spirits - 80 and sunny!

So we put on our swimming suits and started walking around. We reached the coastline cliffs and walked to a big shopping district on top of the cliffs.Still in high spirits we decided to go lay out on the beach as a last hurrah. Beach access was tough because few roads descended down the cliffs to the beach. After about 15 minutes of walking we found an access road so down we went. As we were getting close to the beach there were quite a few locals walking back (it was 4:00 pm). The sidewalk was reasonably narrow and we approached a group of 10-15 people, including a group of about 5 teenage guys. When the got close one of them looked at me and said ¨Big Pappi.¨ I recognized the reference but ignored him. Right then he and one of his friends both bumped into my shoulders. Initially I figured the big group just got scrunched for a minute and everyone accidentally bumped into each other. Erin was slightly ahead and had gotten out of the crowd. However, as soon as they bumped into me I felt the friend´s hand going into my right pocket where my camera was. Then the first guy tried to put his hand into my other pocket where my money was. Out of instinct I swiped down toward my pockets and hit their hands away. My camera was big enough that after I hit their hands away I could feel it was still in my pocket and I was pretty sure the other guy didn´t get his hand far enough into my money pocket to grab anything. I jerked myself away from the crowd pretty deliberately and shook the teenagers off. It seemed like they wanted to keep going after me but we were on a busy street and I was firm enough that they didn´t. Suddenly I realized what happened and I was ticked. So I turned back toward them and lurched at them. They were considerably smaller than me and cowered a little. I thought better than going after them and Erin and I quickly walked away. She hadn´t realized what they did until I told her and we both felt really uneasy. We passed several other groups of guys on our way to the beach and stayed as far away as possible. When we got to the beach we decided to just walk down the beach back towards the mall instead of sitting or swimming.

At night we took a bus tour of the city. We stopped at a fountain park that had a few amazing displays.The bus tour also took us downtown to see some of the old colonial buildings. They were impressive but very spread out. We were glad we hadn't tried to see them on our own.